


Neverland

by the_alchemist



Category: The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-11
Updated: 2017-12-11
Packaged: 2019-02-13 16:25:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12987894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_alchemist/pseuds/the_alchemist
Summary: Henry is away when infant Alba travels for the first time. Clare waits, beside herself with anxiety. Fifty years later, Clare is waiting again, this time for Henry.'Think for a minute, darling: in fairy tales it’s always the children who have the fine adventures. The mothers have to stay at home and wait for the children to fly in the window.'Always. Except for this once ...





	Neverland

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lizwontcry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizwontcry/gifts).



 

> Then she turned up the light, and Peter saw. He gave a cry of pain … "What is it?" he cried again.
> 
> She had to tell him.
> 
> "I am old, Peter. I am ever so much more than twenty. I grew up long ago."
> 
> ‘When Wendy Grew Up’, JM Barrie

****

**_Tuesday, November 6, 2001 (Clare is 30, Alba is 2 months and 30, Henry is 38)_ **

**Claire:** She is screaming again. I awake disorientated, not aware of having slept, only of having been pulled from sleep. I do not remember the last time I slept for a contiguous hour. The last time I had a full night’s sleep, the pregnancy was only just starting to show.

‘Henry, can you—’ But when I turn, the sheets and blankets are flat, and there’s nothing but his pyjama top poking out the top, and the lingering smell of his shampoo.

I fling the covers off and trudge through the cold to her cot. Beneath the overwhelming ache of my exhaustion there’s a tiny thrill of excitement that I will see her again, that pink, ugly screwed-up old man’s face: mine, and Henry’s, and totally her own. Oh, but why won’t she be quiet, just for a moment? _Odi et amo._ I wish the goblins would come and take you away, right now.

Then, abruptly, the screaming stops, the echo ringing for a fraction of a second in my aching ears. In the cot there’s nothing but her wrappings, her little pink hat, and the dirty diaper, its contents seeping into the sheets. The silence lasts a few seconds, then the screaming is mine.

‘Alba, Alba’, the wails grate at my throat. She is too little to be out on her own. She can’t … Henry didn’t, not until he was three … My breasts ache to comfort her. ‘Alba.’ I don’t notice myself falling, but I am on my knees, tearing at my face with my fingernails. The screams are wordless now, and I barely hear when …

‘Mama?’

I am split in two. _Psychosis_ , the part of me still able to reason realises. I look straight ahead and see my own breasts hanging heavy and naked over my slack belly, the nipples raw and cracked.

But when I look up, I see that my eyes are in someone else’s face, framed by his dark hair. I am still screaming.

‘Mama, it’s OK.’ She kneels beside me, puts her hand on my shoulder. ‘Mama, I’m not hurt. Nothing bad happens, I come back with a smile on my face and you sleep the rest of the night.’

I blink, suddenly understanding. ‘Alba?’

She pulls me up by both hands and puts my bathrobe on me, as though I were the child. ‘Come and sit down,’ she says. ‘We won’t have long to wait, but in the meantime, I make you some cocoa.’

It isn’t a question, it’s a statement. It has already happened. I hate myself for feeling reassured. What if she’s wrong? What if this time it’s different? What if this _is_ psychosis?

She checks on me while the milk is warming up. ‘We laugh about this in the future,’ she says. ‘We tell stories about where I went, the adventures I had. Sometimes I was with the Goblin King, sometimes I was with Peter Pan in Neverland.’

She goes back to the kitchen and I hear the clatter of crockery and spoons. She comes back with two steaming mugs. ‘There,’ she says, and sits down opposite me. She has found Henry’s bathrobe and is wearing it.

‘She’s too little,’ I whisper, feeling the words gurgle up through the mucus starting to fill my raw throat.

‘Nowadays,’ Alba continues, ignoring me, ‘I would take the David Bowie option, but I was obsessed with Peter Pan when I was younger. Did you know that in the earliest version, he’s not a little boy but a baby? Barrie started making up the stories for the older Llewellyn-Davies boys when their little brother Peter was born. In the stories we make up, it’s not like Wendy, it’s more like I _am_ Peter Pan. _Alba in Neverland_. We have such fun with it. Or I do at least, I hope you weren’t just pretending.’

She puts her hand on her belly. ‘I don’t know if I’m going to have another,’ she says, ‘but if I do and it’s a boy, I will probably call him Peter.’

A spark of curiosity makes its way up through the guilt and terror. ‘I’m a grandmother?’ I say.

She nods enthusiastically. ‘Just wait until you meet little Henry,’ she says. ‘You get all the joy of having a baby again, and none of the sleepless nights.’

A noise in the nursery. I leap up, spilling the last of my cocoa, and there she is, all pink and clean and laughing. I hold her tight, never wanting to let go again. And when I return to the living room, the older Alba is gone.

 **Henry:** When I arrive back in my bed, Clare is not there. I find her sleeping on the sofa, Alba in her arms. I gently put a blanket over them, and neither wakes. When Alba cries, I take her. Clare gives me a grateful smile, then sleeps until midday.

 

**_Thursday, July 24, 2053 (Henry is 42, Clare is 82)_ **

**Clare:** I was thinking about _Peter Pan_ when he came back to me. Thinking about what grandmother said to me all those years ago: ‘Think for a minute, darling: in fairy tales it’s always the children who have the fine adventures. The mothers have to stay at home and wait for the children to fly in the window’.

I gaze out at the lake, watching the tide ebb and flow, my arms resting on the kitchen table, drinking tea. I am very tired. I think about the other adults in _Peter Pan_ , think about the alarm-clock-swallowing crocodile in all its crass metaphorical glory: Time the hungry beast who has devoured the best of me, and is waiting out there to take the rest.

But not quite yet.

I turn and he is there. I want to run to him, but I take it slowly, as old women must, and it is an eternity before I am in his arms, drinking in the scent of his naked skin. ‘Henry, Henry, Henry,’ is all I say.

This is coming home.

 **Henry:** I make tea and sit with her and we talk and laugh. She tells me about Alba and Oliver, and ‘little Henry’ who is now six feet tall.

‘Does he …’

She nods. ‘But there’s medicine people can take now, to keep it under control. I wish …’ But she shakes her head. There’s no point wishing. ‘There’s also something people can do to induce it in those who weren’t born with the ability,’ she says. ‘Gene editing.’

‘Oh brave new world,’ I say. ‘Were you ever tempted?’

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I had the therapy, but it didn’t work. It’s often that way with older patients, the doctor said. Even people who have natural chronological impairments often stop travelling by the time they’re my age.’

She brushes a wisp of long white hair away from her face. I tell her she is beautiful. I would have told her this anyway, but it is in fact the truth. I desire her.

She laughs an old woman’s laugh. _I will grasp what I can of joy and mirth now, because my store of it is running out_.

‘Come to bed,’ I say suddenly.

‘I’m not tired,’ she lies. ‘Not ready to lie down and die yet.’

‘I was thinking more of _la petite mort_ ,’ I say.

‘Oh Henry,’ she says. ‘That’s kind of you, but I couldn’t bear to think of it, you gritting your teeth and lying back and putting up with–’ She stops. She has noticed the abundant evidence of my desire. ‘Henry …’ she says.

I pick her up, the way I did when she was little.

When we make love, I am pleased to discover that she must have taken other lovers in my absence: no-one could be that good without a full lifetime of practice.

I hold her in my arms and kiss her lips, soft and smooth. There is a slight sheen to her papery skin, _like gold to airy thinness beat_ , I think, for a moment not quite placing the quote.

And then she disappears.

 

**_Date unknown (Henry is 43, Clare is 82)_ **

**Henry:** We are on a beach on an island in the middle of a lagoon. A flock of flamingos is flying around in circles.

I laugh. ‘So this is where you got to!’ I say. ‘I always hoped it was somewhere nice.’

The sun warms our naked skin, the sand is soft and powdery. There is no-one else to be seen, but in front of us there is a blanket spread out fresh bread, and cheese, and cold meats; strawberries and cream, and a bottle of champagne in a cooler.

Clare looks around. ‘I did it,’ she says. ‘I travelled.’

Tucked under one of the plates there is a note on handmade paper: ‘Welcome to Neverland, love Alba and Oliver’, and beneath it, Alba has written out verses from Donne’s ‘Valediction: Forbidding Mourning’:

 

>  Our two souls therefore, which are one,
> 
> Though I must go, endure not yet
> 
> A breach, but an expansion,
> 
> Like gold to airy thinness beat.
> 
>  
> 
> If they be two, they are two so
> 
> As stiff twin compasses are two;
> 
> Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
> 
> To move, but doth, if the other do.
> 
>  
> 
> And though it in the centre sit,
> 
> Yet when the other far doth roam,
> 
> It leans and hearkens after it,
> 
> And grows erect, as that comes home.
> 
>  
> 
> Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
> 
> Like th' other foot, obliquely run;
> 
> Thy firmness makes my circle just,
> 
> And makes me end where I begun.


End file.
